Bletchley Park opens computing museum

Blighty's cultural computing heritage safe at last

Bletchley Park, where code breaking machines were developed during the Second World War, is to be home to a national museum of computing backed by the British Computer Society and the Codes and Ciphers Heritage Trust.

The museum will be housed in Block H of Bletchley Park which was the world's first purpose-built servercomputer room and was home to the Colossus machine which helped break the Lorenz codes used by German High Command.

Star of the show will be a rebuilt Colossus Mk2 machine. It has taken 12 years to rebuild the machine and over 6,000 volunteer days. Much of the original documentation was deliberately destroyed in 1960 but much of the machine was built using standard Post Office exchange components which the team picked up as exchanges were converted to digital.

The museum will also have exhibits of mainframes, super computers and old personal computers restored with the help of the BCS's Computer Conservation Society.

Also on display will be an air traffic control station from West Drayton and an ICL 2900 and a Turing Bombe. Displays will focus on the development of computing since 1945.